And I don't want to know what I should do

I know it's hard to give up when I don't want to be saved

Take me in your heart again

And I know how to keep your heart up when I won't do it again

Don't you go and leave me in my friend

Hello and welcome to episode 1628 of Effectively Wild

A Fangraft Spaceball Podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters

I'm Meg Rally, a Fangrafts and I'm joined as always by Ben Lumberga of the Rain

Ben, how are you?

Happy to be here, how are you?

I'm happy to be here too

Good, well this is our promised minor league restructuring episode

Yeah

We're gonna make sense of what exactly is happening here and we do that with the help of J.J. Cooper of baseball America

Who has been all over this subject from the start and really I think this conversation is helpful for me as his work has been

Just because I feel like I'm still forming my opinion about what all of this means is it good?

Is it bad?

What are the implications here?

It has been sort of oversimplified I think in ways that maybe reduce it down to its essence or maybe distort it

And so I just haven't really formed a concrete impression of what the long-term effects of this will be and maybe it's too soon to do that as J.J. will tell us

So he will lay out exactly what is happening here with various independent leagues becoming partner leagues and affiliates becoming non-affiliates

And some affiliates staying affiliates but moving around from team to team and level to level everything is changing really compared to what it has been for decades

...